1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable terminal. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for managing an application being executed in a portable terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the development of portable terminals towards devices capable of using various types of information beyond the voice communication function, portable terminals are now evolving into smart phones capable of providing various functions through various applications.
Therefore, recent portable terminals have a multi-tasking function, by which a user can execute and use an application while another application is being executed.
According to the multi-tasking function, the application being executed is first switched into a background execution state and a new application is then foreground-executed, so that a user can use functions provided by the foreground-executed application. As a result, the user can simultaneously perform various jobs through various functions provided by the applications, while switching between the application being executed in the background and the application being executed in the foreground.
Such a multi-tasking, in which multiple applications simultaneously provide various functions while being executed in the background or foreground, can provide various advantages for users. However, the multi-tasking accelerates the battery power consumption of the portable terminal.
In other words, even though the application being executed in the foreground is switched into the background, the application switched into the background still utilizes a certain amount of system resources of the portable terminal, such as Central Processing Unit (CPU) resources and memory resources, and thereby continues consuming the battery power of the portable terminal.
The larger the number of applications being executed in the background, the more the battery power is being consumed. Therefore, the larger the number of applications being executed in the background is, the shorter the operation time (e.g., call standby time or continuous communication time) of the portable terminal becomes.
Further, the system resources utilized by the applications being executed in the background may degrade the system performance closely relating to the capability of the portable terminal.
Therefore, there has been a request for a new technology capable of preventing unnecessary power consumption of a portable terminal and improving the system performance thereof while increasing the convenience of the user by allowing a simultaneous execution of multiple applications through the multi-tasking.